The Civil Rights Perspective on Race

The facts of the recent case are now well known. Adding some inferences to it, a reasonable reconstruction of the events is as follows:

On February 26, 2013, Trayvon Martin in walking home after buying some candy and tea. He was observed by George Zimmerman, a volunteer who had recently talked with neighbors about black youths invading neighborhood homes. Zimmerman got out of his vehicle to talk to Martin. Martin, not knowing Zimmerman, and suspicious of “creepy ass crackers” (which I belies referred to gay homosexual white men), likewise acted in a way suspicious to Zimmerman. Shortly thereafter a fight broke out, and Martin got the better of Zimmerman, bashing his head against the cement. Zimmerman then used deadly force to protect himself, killing Martin.

A tragedy, and a sad one.

But why the effort to lynch Mr. Zimmerman? Why the great emotion in the case? What is behind it?

It is impossible to understand what happened without realizing that life is far worse for African-American men than could have been expected in 1973. (By “African-American” I refer to the ethnicity that was brought in chains to British colonies south of the Mason-Dixon line from Africa,primarily remained there as slaves until the Civil War, and then following Reconstruction lived as second-class citizens in the Jim Crow South until either emigrating to the north or experiencing the revolution of the Civil Rights Era).

There has never been an African-American President. (There is currently a President of African descent, Barack Obama, but he was born in Hawaii and on his father’s side is not a descendent of American slaves.)

There has been been a powerful African-American man in the Cabinet. (Secretary of State Colin Powell’s parents were from Jamaica. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is an African-American women.)

Structural changes in the economy have lead to a decline of marriage rates for African-American men, as their earning power has been exceeded by African-American women.

There has been no de facto progress on desegregation since the original Civil Rights efforts a lifetime ago.

The United States is engaged in a long-term project to import large numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants, which not only further depresses wages of African-American men, it reduces African-Americans from being the “largest minority” to the second-largest minority.

The cultural battle over gay marriage reveals African-American powerless in the face of other members of the Democratic Party coalition. Not only cannot the Democratic Party realize African-American goals generally, or defend the relative position of African-Americans, it will actively work against African-American churches and social networks when white liberals disagree with African-American objectives.

Things are bad. They are getting worse. This is real pain.

In this horrible political situations, there are probably two rational responses

A Fresh Start. A complete dismantling of the political work of a lifetime, an acceptance of the basic failure of the “Civil Rights” perspective on race, and an attempt to reboot nearly everything

The Civil Rights Perspective on Race. The creation of an outrage which can unify the African-American community against their enemies, including white Democrats and hispanics.

The costs of (1) are so huge, and the uncertainty so great, that it is unlikely as anything other than a last desperate measure. We’re not there yet.

Option (2), on the other hand, requires simply a reply of the Civil Rights playbook, with some hapless patsy replacing Bull Connor, George Wallace, and other actual enemies of the past. The near-term results are a relative increase in power and sympathy for African-American males.

It is hard for anyone — especially a man — to live without pride. Imitating a Martyr provides some pride. Being politically organized enough to (nearly) lynch a hispanic provides some pride. Getting media attention gets some pride.

But more pride would come from having a functioning education system that prepared African-American men for the economy. Of earning enough to attract a mate. To not lose a job to harder-working lower-paid immigrants, to not have your sacred institutions tramped on, and so on.

Without a road-map for achieving this, we’ll get another Martin case in a few years, another outrage, another attempt to win some political favors and gain some pride through some dead person.

But dismantling the Civil Rights movement, abandoning the Civil Rights perspective on race, and starting over, is the smarter way to go.

Other groups have come from behind without this focus on manufactured outrage. Irish, Koreans, Chinese, Jamaicans, and many others recognized that social hostility can be battered, not thru the “Civil Rights” perspective on race, but through wealth accumulation.

As a friend recently told me, in America there are two colors of people — “Green” and “Red” — people with money, and people struggling paycheck to paycheck. Controlling wealth and the production of wealth is more important than leadership in a group of poor people.

This harsh reality, that the economic infrastructure matter more than political superstructure — that true political success comes from economic value — is much colder than talking about dreams and ideology.

2 thoughts on “The Civil Rights Perspective on Race”

Would distributism be a good ideology for the African-American community to (re)adopt? Perhaps Booker T Washington’s way of success via building a functional community before getting involved in politics should get a second look.

Both WEB Du Bois and Booker T. Washington faced the same reality: when your people are systematically downtrodden and disenfranchised by a relentlessly hostile society, what is the best reaction if one wants to remain at home?

Du Bois saw an opportunity unique to the “America 2.0” world he lived in: The huge benefits of economies of scale, as well as the economic necessity of concentrating black workers in highly productive urban economies, meant that it would be possible to seek political concessions that would be cheaper to pay than excluding blacks from the manufacturing economy. If all you knew from the railroad map of the United States [1] was that railroad intersections had these two properties — huge economies of scale, and high concentrations of workers — the political roadmap seems to be clear.

Unfortunately, it did not work. For whatever reason, symbolic victories and defeats (Brown v. Board of Education, “one man one vote,” the VRA lawsuit and the Zimmerman case) have taken the place of actual victories (de facto educational integration, de facto educational equality, de facto equality of opportunity, de facto equality of outcome, etc, etc)

The alternative — which I refer to as a “fresh start” — is abandoning political concessions and focusing on capital accumulation (both material and social). The distributist “ownership of productive capital to the individual worker’s family,” and Booker T. Washington’s “Up from Slavery,” are both ways of accomplishing this.

The point isn’t that this is easy. But it is possible in a much shorter amount of time and with far greater likelhood than continuing the failed Civil Rights Perspective on Race. Italians, Chinese, Irish, Koreans, Mexicans, and many more faced fear, discrimination, despisal, exclusion, and many other things.

I urge capital accumulation not because life is caring, but because it can be so uncaring.